The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [84]
“I take it we’re not going to watch Dateline tonight.”
Mack could not know his wife was thinking, Or at least the first five minutes of Dateline, as she removed her glasses, set the laptop on the night table, slid down onto the bed, and spread her legs. Mack McCall’s version of foreplay had always consisted of checking the oil futures, so he climbed on top of Jean and entered her without so much as a howdy-do. She felt incredible, her legs pulled up and wrapped around his waist, her fingernails biting into his butt, her large breasts suffocating him with pleasure, as he pushed into her again and again and again with the steady rhythm of an oil well pump and he wondered what oil futures had closed at today when—
“Mack! Mack, stop!”
Jean reached for her glasses and the remote control. She put her glasses on with her left hand and pointed the remote with her right. Mack slipped out of her, panting heavily.
“What?”
Jean pointed at the television. “Look!”
Mack turned to the TV and saw his dead son’s face.
“Tonight, from the federal building in downtown Dallas, an exclusive live interview with Shawanda Jones, the woman accused of murdering Clark McCall, the son of Senator Mack McCall, the leading candidate to be the next president of the United States.”
On the screen, Mack saw the black face of Shawanda Jones, prostitute, drug addict, and murderer. Sitting next to her was A. Scott Fenney, Esq.
“He’s a hunk,” Jean said, which ignited the anger already smoldering within Mack.
On the TV: “With Ms. Jones tonight is her court-appointed lawyer, Scott Fenney. Mr. Fenney, every news show in the country has been trying to get an interview with you or your client ever since she was arrested—why tonight?”
“Because certain information has come to our attention that requires a public appeal. And because certain actions of Senator McCall constitute obstruction of justice.”
“That’s a serious charge, Mr. Fenney. But let’s first go back to the night of Saturday, June fifth. What happened?”
Mack McCall’s blood pressure rose steadily as the black bitch told her story: That Clark had picked her up, offered her a thousand dollars for a night of sex, took her to the McCall mansion in Highland Park, engaged in sex acts with her, and then beat her and called her nigger; that she fought him off, kneed him in the groin, and left, taking the money he owed her and his car keys; that the last time she had seen Clark, he was alive, lying on the floor, in pain and cursing her; that the murder weapon was in fact her gun, but that she had not held the gun to Clark’s head and pulled the trigger and put a bullet through his brain. When she finally stopped talking, the program went to commercial.
During the break, McCall paced the bedroom, naked and angry. And when Mack McCall got angry, someone got hurt. That someone would be A. Scott Fenney. The only question was how McCall would hurt him this time. He had just about decided when the show returned to the air and the reporter turned to Fenney.
“Mr. Fenney, your client is alleging that Clark McCall was a racist and a brutal rapist. But he’s not here to defend himself. How can you expect a jury to believe the word of a drug-addicted prostitute?”
“Because she wasn’t the first woman Clark McCall beat and raped.”
All the anger Mack McCall had experienced in his sixty years of life combined—anger against business competitors, political